


Snowfall.

by MollyMaryMarie



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, F/M, Howard Stark has a brief appearance, Peggy and Natasha get mentioned, Protective Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-01
Updated: 2016-03-01
Packaged: 2018-05-24 05:24:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6142870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MollyMaryMarie/pseuds/MollyMaryMarie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His face suddenly grew serious. “What if this doesn’t work?” he sighed. </p>
<p>“I trust you, Howard. I know it will.” </p>
<p>“It’s never been tested. No one has ever done this before.” I reached up and held my hand against his cheek. </p>
<p>“I’ll be okay. I promise,” I smiled confidently, though my insides were shaking. Howard Stark had discovered a way that a person could be cryogenically frozen – stored away in a permanent sleep until a desired time in which they would be woken. </p>
<p>And he had been right about his first point. Bucky and Steve might both be dead. But it had been 3 years and, despite innumerable search parties for both of them, not even their bodies had been located. I wouldn’t ever give up on them still being alive, somewhere.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snowfall.

A scowl covered my lips as I stared at the two idiots seated at the table across from me – the blonde had gotten the worst of it. His eye was completely black, his light hair was stained red. The brunette, of course, had a little more muscle – he had managed to make it out with only a busted lip and a cut above his right eye, but it had bled like mad, half of his face was completely covered in blood. He remained conspicuously quiet, maintaining an amused smirk, blood running in between the cracks in his lips.

“Maggie,” the blonde began to say, but I held up my hand to stop him.

“You don’t even need to explain. I’m already positive that _you_ started this,” I poked my finger hard against his scrawny chest. A stifled laugh escaped from his cohort’s damaged lips, but when I looked over, he pulled his lips into his teeth, working on cleaning the blood from his face with a cold dishrag I had given him.

“You’re not out of the water either,” I said, glaring at the other, from the corner of my eye. His lips remained closed but I could swear I saw a smile in his eyes.  

“I didn’t start it,” the blonde argued. I interrupted.

“I honestly don’t care if Franklin Delano Roosevelt started it, you can’t keep doing this, Steven,” I reprimanded him. His head fell slightly, but his eyes remained on me.

“He stole an old lady’s purse, Maggie,” he said softly, his eyes pleading with me to understand why he had to act. My scowl softened, but I still rolled my eyes.

“And where were _you_ , James?” I asked, swiftly turning my wrath toward the brunette. His eyes narrowed at me – he was less soft toward me than Steve was.

“Don’t use my first name to intimidate me, _Margaret_ ,” he huffed. “I can’t babysit Steve every second of every day.”

“Well, why the hell not?” I shouted. Steve immediately stiffened.

“Mag,” he hissed at my language. I smirked. His partner in crime looked as if he were about to double over in laughter.

“I’m sorry,” I sighed in defeat. There was nothing that I could do to prevent Steve Rogers from being Steve Rogers. And of course, if Steve was going to act like Steve, then Bucky was going to be there to protect him for it. So where had Bucky been?

“It wasn’t Bucky’s fault,” Steve said quietly, glancing over at his friend.

“Yes, it was,” Bucky replied, letting his head fall forward. Almost instantly, his head snapped back toward Steve, I could swear I saw tears in his eyes. “What are you going to do without me?” he asked, his jaw clenched tightly. Steve’s eyebrows furrowed as he opened his mouth to speak, but Bucky shook his head, pushing hard against the table as he stood and stomped out the back door of my parent’s house.

“What is he talking about?” I asked, wide-eyed.

“He enlisted today,” Steve said, beaming proudly, but his blue eyes were cloudy. My heart fell immediately. How could he enlist? What about Steve? What about me? Not that I meant that much to Bucky – I was fairly sure of that – but he meant everything to me. And I knew that Steve was the most important person in _his_ life, certainly.

“I’m going to find him,” I said, throwing a bag of frozen peas across the table, motioning for Steve to put it over his throbbing eye.

 ----------------

“James Buchanan Barnes, answer me!” I shouted into the air. I had been looking for him in the field behind my house for the last ten minutes – he was a ghost.

Bucky and I had lived next door to each other since we were kids. Because of this, Steve and I had also practically lived next door to each other, as he was constantly at Bucky’s house. My mother still insisted that I invite them over to dinner regularly. She was probably just trying to get me to marry Bucky – she used to talk about it all the time – likely so I would move out of my parent’s house and into Bucky’s apartment in the city. An idea that I myself had considered. More than once. More like every day.

Bucky didn’t see me that way. I was sure that I was more like a little sister to him. I had come to accept it. But the way he acted with Steve just made me fall in love with him all over again, every day. The two of them were like brothers. Closer than brothers.

Still, Bucky had always been one to find reasons to come over to my house, or to invite me out to dinner with him and Steve. He never took me out alone, never on a real date. But sometimes – when Steve wasn’t in the direct vicinity, or sometimes even when he was – Bucky let his eyes travel a little further, let his hand ‘accidentally’ brush my shoulder, let his un-shoed foot caress my ankle under the table. But he never acted on anything. Just like Bucky to be a tease. I was almost sure he did it with every girl he met.

Those girls – if there were other girls – didn’t fall asleep on their parent’s sofa with him in their teenage years. Those girls hadn’t spent hours playing hide-and-seek in his backyard. Those girls weren’t there to nurse his wounds. _I_ was.

“Maggie,” I heard a soft voice hidden within the tall grass. I leaned over to my right and directly into Bucky’s face, where he was lying with his hands behind his head.

“There you are,” I sighed in relief as I plopped down next to him, the grass towering over me. Cautiously, I looked over at him. His eyes were red. “Steve told me you enlisted.” He laughed loud and forcefully, swallowing hard and clenching his jaw tightly.

“That’s what I told him,” he said evasively.

“What is that supposed to mean?” His eyes found mine and I saw the remnants of tears left in them. I needed to know why.

“I got drafted,” he said, biting down hard on his bottom lip, closing his eyes to keep my from seeing the tears in them, though they spilled out over his cheeks anyway. The breath instantly fell from my chest. So he didn’t _want_ to go, after all.

“So why did you …” I began to ask, but he interrupted.

“Steve tried to enlist 5 different times this week, have I told you that?” His eyes remained closed. “What kind of friend would I be if I told him I was being unwillingly forced to go and do the thing he’s been trying to volunteer for?”

“Buck,” I replied softly, trying to think of something to say in response, but the words were lost. How could I encourage him about fighting in a war that I didn’t want him to fight in? That he himself didn’t even want a part in? I didn’t have to respond. He reached his hand through the grass between us and found my fingers, gripping onto them tightly. When I looked over at him, his eyes were still closed.

“Mag,” he said, with a shuddering sigh. “I don’t want to go.” At that, tears began to flow down my own cheeks. How could I watch him leave, knowing there was a very real chance that I would never see him come back again?

“I don’t want you to go.” I replied quickly, pushing his fingers through mine. Finally, his blue eyes opened and found mine.

“Don’t tell Steve. Please.” His eyebrows furrowed. I nodded.

“I won’t,” I promised, pulling his hand up and holding it against my chest. This might be the closest that Bucky’s hands had ever been to me. The closest they ever would. His arm tightened against me as he sat up, and I began to let go of his hand, but his fingers tensed against mine, holding them in place. I reveled in the touch of his skin, the brush of his thumb against mine. He looked at our entwined hands for a long time.

“Take care of him, Maggie,” he said, his voice quivering, his arm tense.

“I promise, I …” I began to promise all of the things I would do for Steve. I would carry an extra inhaler in my purse. I would look down the dark alleyways that Bucky always seemed to find him in. I would memorize his blood type. I began to list all of these things, but Bucky stopped me suddenly. By pressing his lips to mine. Softly, at first. Then his fingers found their way into the wilds of my hair. The hand that had so innocently been brushing the top of my thumb suddenly spread out over my waist. I bunched the fabric on the back of his shirt tightly into my nervous fists.

“I thought I’d have time,” he said, letting his lips retreat, but keeping our foreheads together. “I was going to court you right,” he laughed, bitter tears still springing into the corners of his eyes.

“Bucky,” I breathed out and at the warmth of my breath on his lips, he pushed them together again, this time much more passionately than the first.

“I tried so long to pretend I wasn’t in love with you,” he laughed again, biting softly at my bottom lip in between his words. “I’m still young, I’m not ready to get married.” Tears flowed down his cheeks steadily now. “I’m not ready to die, either.”

“Then promise me you won’t,” I replied immediately. “Promise me that you’ll be ready to get married when you get back.” His eyes brightened for a moment before he kissed me again, pulling me tightly against him. More tightly than I expected – I fell forward into him, but he was unfazed. He pulled my leg over his waist until I sat squarely on his lap, facing him. The bottom hem of my dress pooled around his hips.

“Bucky,” I said in surprise, trying to dissuade him, but not very hard as I let him kiss me with every muscle in his mouth.

“I leave tomorrow morning,” he said, his voice thick with sorrow as he buried his face into my neck. My chest felt as if it were about to collapse. I had no idea it was happening so soon. “Let me have tonight,” he whispered into my ear, his fingers fidgeting with the hem of my dress, as if waiting for my signal.

“You can have tonight and every night after the war if you just come back to me,” I consented, pulling my fingers through his hair. At my word, he sighed into my skin, his hands slid up the length of my legs and settled onto my hips from underneath my dress.

“What if I don’t come back?” he said, his hands raising slightly from my skin, as if suddenly aware of the position he had put me in. After all – and Bucky knew this – I hadn’t ever had a boyfriend. I had never even been kissed by a boy. The part that Bucky didn’t know was that it was because I had been waiting for him to do it.  

“You have to,” I replied definitively. “Because if you don’t, James Buchanan, I will spend the rest of my life alone.” The blue of his eyes brightened slightly.

“You would wait for me?” he asked, almost unbelieving.

“I’ve already been waiting for you this long. What’s a little longer?” I grinned. At that promise, he closed his eyes and leaned his head back, a slight smile on his lips. Suddenly, the grip he had on my waist tightened and he spun us both around until he was leaning over me, kneeling in the grass. This time, the hem of my dress spilled back, displaying my hips in broad daylight. Bucky gave it a little more than just a glance.

“Be my wife, Margaret Elizabeth.” The words rumbled in his chest as his hand slid up over my knee and his eyes followed. When I didn’t respond, he looked up, almost worried. I slowly curled my fingers around his tie and pulled him down toward me, his hips nestling deeper into mine.

“I’d be a fool not to,” I hummed into his lips, which opened quickly and covered my mouth with great force. While I worked on pulling the tie from underneath the collar of his shirt, his hand slipped around to the back of my leg. I breathed in a little too sharply, trying not to let it become a gasp. I was trying hard to not act like a novice, even if I was. He must’ve noticed my apprehension, because he removed his hand quickly from my skin, though it took him a little longer to untangle our tongues.

“Should I stop?” he asked, his chest heaving breathlessly. I shook my head.

“No.” I hooked my finger into his shirt collar. “But Steve _is_ still in my house.”

Bucky grinned – like he had forgotten all about what tomorrow would bring.  “If he knows what’s good for him, he’ll stay there.” And his lips devoured mine again.

\----------------

A man I had never met stood at my front door. His face was quite familiar, but he was much too tall and much too broad to be Steve Rogers. Maybe I just _wanted_ him to be Steve. Whoever he was didn’t matter. He was in a military uniform. The look in his eyes was of complete despair. I knew why he was here. I almost shut the door in his face so I didn’t have to hear it. The tears were already forming in my eyes.

I hadn’t know how it had happened, but Steve managed to enlist soon after Bucky had been deployed – though they weren’t placed in the same infantry. So not only had I lost the love of my life, I lost the person I had promised him that I would protect.

The man at my door was coming to tell me that one, or God-forbid, both of the boys that I loved most in the world were not coming home.

“Mag,” he said, a familiar voice coming from an unfamiliar body. My eyebrows furrowed as I squinted at him. “It’s me. It’s Steve.”

“Steve?” I said, reaching out to poke him in his once scrawny chest. Now it was practically a wall of sheer muscle. Even more that Bucky. Instantly, I wrapped my arms around his suddenly broad shoulders. “How?” Maybe it wasn’t bad news like I thought.

“That’s not important,” he said, his jaw – now much firmer than before – tensed. I felt the color drain out of my face. My heart slowed. I had been right, after all.

“It’s Bucky, isn’t it?” my voice puddled into barely a whisper. His whole face seemed to collapse in on itself and I fell to the floor in a heap.

“I’m so sorry, Mag,” he sighed heavily, his voice breaking as he knelt down to hold me. My shoulders shook as I sobbed into Steve’s chest.

\----------------

“Last chance to back out, Miss Williams,” he said, watching me carefully.

I shook my head. “No, Howard. This is what I want. Wake me up when you find them,” I said defiantly. Stark shook his head.

“What if we find them dead?” he asked softly, his eyes full of concern.

“Then you might as well pull the plug, because I can’t live without them.” A smile appeared on his lips underneath his pencil-thin moustache.

“One in particular,” he grinned, nudging my shoulder.

“They’re a package deal. You don’t get Bucky without Steve.”

“I hope that is excluding the bedroom,” he laughed heartily. I smiled.

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” I replied in more of a statement and Stark raised his eyebrows at me, sliding his tongue along his back teeth.

“Maggie, you she-devil,” he laughed, brushing the hair out of my face. His face suddenly grew serious. “What if this doesn’t work?” he sighed.

“I trust you, Howard. I know it will.”

“It’s never been tested. No one has ever done this before.” I reached up and held my hand against his cheek.

“I’ll be okay. I promise,” I smiled confidently, though my insides were shaking. Howard Stark had discovered a way that a person could be cryogenically frozen – stored away in a permanent sleep until a desired time in which they would be woken.

And he was right about his first point. Bucky and Steve might both be dead. But it had been 3 years and, despite innumerable search parties for both of them, not even their bodies had been located. I hadn’t ever given up on them still being alive, somewhere.

I had tried to move on. I went on a few dates. But all I could see in my mind was the photo of Bucky in his uniform that Steve had given me when he had delivered the bad news. Steve had been assured by plenty of people to give up on Bucky – that he couldn’t have possibly survived such a fall. Neither Steve nor I were 100% convinced.

Then the worst thing happened. I lost Steve. He successfully took down Hydra, and likely saved the world, but his plane went down in the Arctic. Once again, nobody ever found him. And nobody could tell me that he hadn’t survived. He was Steve Rogers – boy from Brooklyn turned super soldier Captain America. He survived. Somehow.

I had spent enough time bothering military officials and higher-ups that I got to know Howard Stark. He mentioned his idea to me absent-mindedly, not expecting me to volunteer to be his first test subject. If Steve went down in the Arctic, Howard had said, it was likely that a similar process had taken place in his body – that maybe the frigid waters would somehow preserve him like a fossil. As soon as he said it, I knew I had to try. I would do anything for a chance to see my boys again.

“If only I had met you before Bucky had. You and I could’ve really been something,” Howard grinned, his eyebrows raised but I shook my head.

“You’re meant for someone better than me, Howard. Prettier, in the very least. Now let’s get this thing going before I lose my nerve.” He solemnly shook his head, gave my hand one last squeeze, and closed me up inside a giant metal tube. He looked longingly at me one more time through the round glass window, as if to say ‘ _Are you sure about this_?’ I nodded. Without taking his eyes off of me, he flipped a switch. I couldn’t even recognize a change in temperature – it was just like falling asleep, but in light speed.

\----------------

“She hasn’t come around just yet.”

“Does Captain Rogers know?”

“Captain Rogers still thinks he’s being held here against his will, I doubt he would believe that we just unfroze his buddy’s girlfriend.”

I heard the conversations floating above my head. They had woken me up. Which means they had found either Bucky or Steve, and by the conversation, I knew it was at least Steve. I prayed it was Bucky, too. I opened my eyes slowly and people began swarming around me, where I was lying on some sort of hospital-type bed.

The first words from my mouth, already knowing that Steve Rogers was alive, became, “Is Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes alive?” Though my eyes were blurry, I could see the exchanged glances taking place between the individuals in the room.

“Miss Williams, Sergeant Barnes died in 1945,” one timid voice replied. I let out a long, slow breath. So, it was just me and Steve, now.

“Then someone take me to Captain Steve Rogers.”

\----------------

My legs were a little wobbly – someone helped me down the hall to the room where Steve was staying. My heart beat increased. From my perspective, I hadn’t seen Steve in nearly 3 years – but from what they were telling me, I hadn’t actually seen Steve in nearly 70 years.  It was severely disorienting to wake up in a completely different century – I had to get to Steve, so he wouldn’t feel so alone.

They told me that they had found Captain America exactly how Howard expected they would find him. Steve’s plane was frozen in the Arctic with him still inside, like a preserved specimen. They carefully thawed him out and tried to ease his transition into the new era, but he had gone on a confused rampage at first.

The young man helping me down the hall opened the door for me. The room was spacious, like a swanky hotel room. Inside, Steve sat on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands. Instantly, I felt relief.

“Steve,” I said in a breath that fell from my lips. He looked up immediately.

“Maggie?” he said, tears seeming to form in his eyes. I rushed to him and he scooped me up into his muscular arms. I still wasn’t used to Big Steve.

“I’m so glad to see you. I thought …” I fought back tears.

“How are you here?” he asked, holding my face in his hands and turning it side to side, as if trying to make sure I was actually me.

“I got froze, too, Cap,” I smiled, but he looked even more confused. “Howard put me under. I told him to wake me up when he found the two of you. I didn’t think it would take 7 decades.” His confusion persisted.

“The two of us?” he asked and then realization hit him. Hard. “Bucky.” I just nodded, my eyes falling to the floor.

“I guess I was wrong about that one,” I said quietly, holding down the lump in my throat. It looked like Steve was doing the same thing. He tried changing the subject.

“I didn’t think anyone I knew would still be here,” he said, squeezing me gently. I smiled – the Steve on the outside had changed, but not the one inside. He was still scrawny, bully-fighting, gentle Steve. He was still that kid from Brooklyn.

\----------------

With a sigh, I threw my purse onto the kitchen counter in my kitchen. I had moved back into the house that my parents had owned in 1943. Of course, it wasn’t the same house – it had been remodeled so many times, I wasn’t sure there was any part of it that was still mine. However, one thing remained the same – the backyard. The place that I could always find Bucky in hide and seek. The same place that he asked me to be his wife. When I looked out the kitchen window, it was like looking back into 1943.

My cell phone rang and, at first, I jumped at the sound. Two years living in the future and there were still things that surprised me. I couldn’t get used to cell phones, and compact discs, and computers. Steve and I helped each other through it.

Occasionally, Steve would even take me out dancing at a place that the kids considered ‘retro’. And it would be almost just like it used to be. Back then, I would always bring along a friend, for either Steve or Bucky, since it was obvious that Bucky wasn’t going to consider it a double date. But by the end of the night, when the slow songs came on, Bucky was always the one with his hand around my waist, letting his face fall a little closely to mine.

Steve never found the right girl, and I had since come to discover that it had been because he was meant to be with a specific girl. I still wondered why Peggy didn’t let Howard freeze her, as well. I knew it had to do with her work in creating SHIELD. If only I had been as strong as Peggy – but then again, I wouldn’t have been here to help Steve find his way in the 21st century. Though, I wasn’t much help lately – Steve stayed in D.C. to be a part of SHIELD, but I couldn’t stay away from this house. It was my home. And more importantly, it had practically been Bucky’s home.

I flipped open the phone and held it to my ear.

“Hello?” I answered.

“Maggie,” I heard Steve’s voice on the other end, but it sounded different.

“Steve, what’s wrong?” I asked quickly.

“You were right,” was all he said. I was silent, waiting for him to continue. My eyes habitually glanced out the kitchen window, and I drew in a short breath. A man, clad in all black stood in the tall grass in my backyard, back toward the window.

And I knew. His chestnut-brown hair was longer, his frame was filled out with more muscle, his left arm was covered completely in metal – but it was him.

“Bucky,” I breathed out, suddenly void of all energy.

“Yeah,” Steve let out a slow breath before briefly explaining how during the last several weeks, he’d been dealing with a Hydra infiltration in SHIELD and found Bucky doing their bidding as the Winter Soldier. Bucky had been sent to kill Steve – and he had no idea who Steve even was. No idea who Bucky Barnes was. Despite all of that, Steve told me that he was pretty sure he had ended up saving his life. And then he had vanished again. Steve said that after he had gotten out of the hospital, he had followed Bucky’s trail to New York, but it went cold. Steve was headed to my house.

“Steve,” I interrupted at that point. “He’s here.”

“Where?” he shouted into the phone. But his voice got quiet. “Maggie, don’t.”

“I have to, Steve,” I said blankly, closing the phone quickly before I could hear Steve’s argument. The two of them were the whole reason I was here. Steve was only half of the piece I had been missing. The other half was standing in my backyard.

Cautiously, I opened the back door and made my way over to where the Winter Soldier stood at attention in the long grass, his entire body strapped down with black leather, the lower half of his face covered. I wasn’t sure how to approach him.

“You made me wait a long time,” I finally said from a distance. His face whipped around quickly, as if unaware of my presence until then. His dark eyes were wide – the rest of his face was covered by a mask of some sort, the structure of which I could only equate to a dog muzzle. He looked me up and down, eyebrows furrowed, but once he got back up to my face, his eyes remained there for a long time, searching. I wondered if his breathing had sped up, or if I was only imagining the heaving of his chest.

Slowly, he reached up underneath his hair and the mask fell from his face. Instantly, at the site of his face in full, tears flowed freely down my cheeks.

“Bucky,” I let his name slip out shakily, a hand reaching up to cover my mouth. I was trying hard to hide the fact that I was on the verge of sobbing. I didn’t want to startle him. He looked like a wild animal – his unkempt, long hair hung down into his eyes, which had muddled from bright blue into a dark gray. What had Hydra done to him?

At the sound of his name, he slowly reached out and brushed his fingertips against my arm, tracing up across my shoulder, settling onto my cheek. His head was tilted to one side, he swallowed hard. Gently, he pushed my long hair behind my ear. I couldn’t help it, I leaned into his arm and closed my eyes.

“Should I … stop?” he asked softly. But I could tell that even while he said it, it was a mechanical memory, and not from the conscious memory of the time he had actually said that to me in this very yard. Still – my Bucky was in there somewhere. I could see the bright blue returning to his eyes. I had to draw him out.

“No. But Steve _is_ still in my house,” I replied from the memory of our first night _together_. His face remained tensed in confusion, and he began to speak, almost unintentionally. But his curled fingers remained softly planted against my cheek.

“If he knows what’s good for him …” he spoke slowly, as if unsure of where the words were coming from. His jaw was clenched, he pursed his lips.

“He’ll stay there,” I finished the thought for him, taking a step forward to close the gap between us. Suddenly, Bucky’s eyes lost their color and he quickly withdrew his hand. His eyes left mine and shot toward the house. He knelt to pick up his mask from the grass, but before he put it back on his face, he looked over at me.

“I don’t want to go,” he said in a shaking voice, as if he remembered saying that to me, but not the reason behind it.

“Then stay, Buck.” My fingers brushed against his briefly before he turned and went racing back into the woods behind my house. Just as he disappeared into the brush, I heard the loud roar of a motorcycle from in front of the house. Of course. That was why he was in such a hurry to go. Before I could count the seconds, Steve was right next to me, inspecting me for damage and pelting me with questions that were all blurring together. _“What did he say you?” “Did he hurt you?” “Which way did he go?”_

“I had him, Steve,” I mumbled as I put my face into my hands. Without saying a word, Steve wrapped my body into his. I sobbed.

“He’s still alive,” he said with a sigh of relief. I just nodded _. I had him_. His hands were on my face. His skin was against mine. _I had him._ If only I had a way to keep him.

\----------------

After Bucky had fallen from the train, his mother gave me a large majority of his things – clothes he hadn’t been able to take with him, photographs of the three of us, all of his old records. I made Howard promise me to keep them in airtight storage for me. Somehow, Howard had preserved them to near perfection – it was almost like they had gone into the freezer with me, not having aged a day.

Once several hours had passed and Steve was sure Bucky wasn’t going to make a reappearance, I sent him on his way back to New York, and I went through all of Bucky’s old things, lingering over the items of clothing that still had the haunting scent of Bucky’s cologne on them. Seventy years had already gone by and he still smelled the same.

I needed to have that smell close to me. I needed to pretend like Bucky was back – like he was himself again. There was a faded red shirt on the top of the pile and I traded the one I was wearing for it. It was soft, like they way he had touched my face in the yard.

Before I could start sobbing again, I left everything out on the floor of my bedroom – the same bedroom I had in 1943 – and turned off the lights. Brushing off the tears that had already slipped past my defenses, I crawled underneath the covers of my bed, letting out a long sigh. There was no way I was getting any sleep.

Several hours of tossing and turning later, I was still awake. Bucky was still on my mind, as well as more questions than could fit in my brain at once. How had he survived? How had Hydra gotten their hands on him? What kind of torture had they put him through to make him forget himself? To make him want to kill his best friend?

With a loud huff, I turned again, away from the wall, to see a dark figure sitting in the armchair in the corner of the room. I almost screamed. Instead, I sat up. Carefully. And waited. Waited for him to speak. He had come back for a reason.

“Who are you … to me?” he asked quietly, holding a photograph in his hands. As he let it fall, I saw that it was a picture of him and me the day before he left.

“I’m sure you’ll remember soon,” I smiled, despite how I wanted to tell him everything. Despite how I wanted to hold his face in my hands.

“Tell me your name.”

 “That part is not as important.” I didn’t want to flood his brain with too much information. He would remember everything on his own, given some time.

“There are things that I remember about this place,” he said softly from the dark corner. “Why aren’t you afraid of me?”

“Why _would_ I be?” I countered. He scoffed slightly.

“I’m an assassin from Hydra. I’ve killed hundreds of people. More importantly, I distinctly remembering having you pinned down in that yard,” he said pointing out the window. Immediately, I smiled. So he did remember. He was just missing the context.

“Technically, yes. But if you can remember that, then you should be able to remember what it was that you said to me next.” He pinched the bridge of his nose as he rose from his seat, walking slowly toward my bed. “ _Be my wife, Margaret Elizabeth_ ,” I heard his voice play in my head from 1943.

“I _don’t_ remember,” he growled, as if frustrated with himself. And maybe with me, too, for being so evasive. His voice softened as he continued. “But I don’t remember you being afraid then, either.”

“That’s because I wasn’t.”

“And you’re still not now?”  He was growing steadily closer to me.

“Not at all.” His eyes narrowed at me in the moonlight.

“Then why is your heart beating so fast?” he asked. I actually laughed.

“For an entirely different reason. The better question is why is _yours_?” At that, he stopped, right in front of the window, close enough that I could reach out and hold him.

“I … I don’t know,” he said, the expression fading from his face. He was no longer the Winter Solider. He was Bucky again.

“I can tell you why,” I offered. His eyes never once left mine.

“How?” he asked, and his expression changed again. The assassin from Hydra was paranoid of what I was going to do to him. I said nothing, instead, patting a spot on the bed. For a moment, he just stood still, watching me carefully. Then he slowly sat down on the bed in front of me. His gray eyes remained skeptically glued to me. 

“Does this make it worse?” I asked, taking his hand into mine, turning his palm up and softly running the tips of my fingers along the middle. He shuddered.

“Yes,” he said in barely a whisper, swallowing hard as he closed his eyes and turned his face toward the ceiling. He let out a long, jagged breath.

“What about this?” I took the same fingertips and brushed them lightly underneath his stubbled chin, as it was raised. He practically moaned.

“Much worse.” His breathing was heavy, jaw clenched tightly, eyes still closed.

“Tell me when to stop,” I whispered slowly, pushing my hand through his long hair, curling my fingers around the back of his neck. He tilted his head in response.

“Please don’t stop,” he whined, pushing his face harder against the curve of my wrist. As he did, his lips lightly brushed against my skin, and though he initially seemed surprised as the sudden, foreign contact, he took my arm into his hands and pressed his lips against it again. Very intentionally working his way back up toward me.

“Is that helping?” I asked as he reached my shoulder.

“No. It hurts like hell,” he mumbled into my skin in a broken voice as he reached my neck, holding the other side in his hand. By this point, he had crawled up onto the bed and was straddling over me, gently pushing me back against the wall.

“Should we stop?” I asked as his lips reached my jawline. He pulled back for only a second, just to look at me. There he was. My Bucky.

“God, no,” he whispered as he tightened his grip on my neck, pulling my lips to meet his. He still tasted like Bucky. The more the muscles of his mouth worked, the less his other muscles worked, until he was lying just above me, his knee between my legs the only thing holding him away from me. The metal on his arm brushed against my bare waist and I shivered underneath him.

“Does it still hurt?” I asked as his lips migrated beneath my ear.

“It feels like I’m about to come apart,” he breathed out hard and hot against my skin, the knee that had been holding him up folded and he laid against me. His metal arm reached down and held tightly onto my hip. As he pushed himself up against me, I let out an involuntary yelp at how heavy that arm could press down. Suddenly, I realized it wasn’t his arm that was covered in metal – that metal _was_ his arm. And it was a hell of a lot stronger than his real arm used to be. At my cry, he immediately stopped.

“No, I’m fine,” I said, trying to cover the pained wincing in my face, but he wasn’t fooled. He stood quickly and held his hands in the air. For a few seconds, he paced around in the room, hands locked behind his head. When he looked over at me again, Bucky had been replaced by the Winter Soldier.

“Whatever we were – whatever I was – I can’t be that again.”

“Bucky,” I pleaded. Before I could say more, he leaned down into my face, holding my throat with his metal hand. But he didn’t squeeze.

“I am not Bucky,” he enunciated, gently pushing me back away from him as he put his foot on my windowsill and jumped. I watched him run back toward the woods.

I placed my face into my pillow. And screamed.

\----------------

My hip was sore in the morning. Steve had called six times since 7am. He kept insisting that he could come and stay at my house for a little while, to make sure that I was safe, but I turned him down. I told him to stay at Stark Tower with Tony – who I always thought looked just like his father – until something actually happened.

So far, I had kept him in the dark about seeing Bucky again last night. I was sure he wouldn’t take too well to the fact that Bucky had broken into my house in the middle of the night and was watching me sleep. Not that I had been sleeping anyway.

As I raised my shirt – Bucky’s old shirt – to my chest and stood in front of the mirror, I was sure Steve wouldn’t be happy about that either. A fairly large bruise had formed on the skin that Bucky had put his weight on. I didn’t care – it was worth it to be that close to him again. To feel his lips against mine, to catch his scent on something that wasn’t just a memory of him, to run my fingers through his hair.

Despite that I was distraught over his missing memories, and the torturous, horrible things that Hydra had put him through, I was actually happier than I had been in years. It didn’t matter if Bucky didn’t remember me. He would eventually. The way he had acted last night was proof of that. His mind didn’t remember, but his heart did.

“I’m sorry about that,” I heard a quiet voice from behind me and I pulled my shirt down as I turned. Bucky sat in the open window, hands hanging from the frame above him. I smiled at him. I still hadn’t been completely sure he would come back.

“This?” I laughed. “No. It was worth it.” I swore he almost smiled.

“I nearly broke your hip. It was worth it?” he said, looking carefully at me.

“Oh, hell yes,” I grinned brightly as I walked over toward him. He eased away from me at first, a cautious expression on his face, but I stopped before I reached him, so he leaned back in, putting his elbows on his knees.

“Does it hurt?” he asked, reaching out and lifting the edge of my shirt. Inadvertently, I took in a quick, short breath and he looked up at me, but didn’t move away like he usually did. Was he getting used to me?

He purposefully used his non-metal right hand to gently brush over the bruised skin. I held my breath, so that I couldn’t possibly make any sound that might make him stop touching me. I _really_ didn’t want him to stop touching me.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” I laughed. I expected him to let my shirt fall back down, but he kept it up, carefully maneuvering his metal fingers around my waist on the opposite side, and letting his other fingers trace over my injured skin.

“This is why I can’t stay,” he said, holding his fingers over my skin and looking up at me – the look in his eyes was indescribably miserable.

“Were you thinking about it before?” I asked hopefully. This time, an actual smile crossed over his lips for a split second before it disappeared.

“It seemed like you … wanted me to stay,” he said, the end of his words turning up, as if he were asking me if that were actually the truth.

“I still want you to stay.” He let his hands fall, and his head fell into them.

“I threatened you last night. I had my hand on your throat,” he said sadly, pushing his fingers through his long hair to look up at me. His gray eyes were full of regret.

“I didn’t believe for a second that you could hurt me,” I admitted.

“ _Why_?” his fingers tightened in his hair. “ _Why_ do you trust me?” I knelt down in front of him, took his hands from his knotted hair and smiled.

“Because I am in love with you, James Buchanan Barnes. And I have been for almost a hundred years.” The color returned to his eyes, slightly.

“Am I in love with you, too?” he asked innocently. I just smiled.

“I guess you’ll find out,” I grinned, as I winked at him and stood.

“Where are you going?” he asked, mild panic in his voice.

“To run you a shower. So you can change out of all that blood-soaked leather.” I was surprised when he followed close behind me.

“Are you sure?” he asked again, as if not believing that I wasn’t afraid of him. As I turned the hot water on, he continued. “I’ve killed people. I’ve _tortured_ people.”

“So you’ve said,” I replied calmly as I turned. He was leaning with one arm resting on the doorway above his head. No doubt – it was completely Bucky in there.

“These weren’t bad people. Some of them had family,” he insisted, but the look on his face seemed worried that I might start agreeing with what a horrible person he thought he was. I let out a sigh as I closed the gap between us.  

 “Buck,” I said softly, “That wasn’t you.” He shook his head fervently.

“No, it _was_ me. Not even Hydra can wipe _those_ memories,” he said, his breathing suddenly becoming very sporadic, his fist clenched where it rested above him. Without really considering the consequences of it, I wrapped my arms around Bucky’s chest and held my head against his heart. Surprisingly, his breathing evened out.

“I’m so sorry,” I said softly. “But the fact that you’re still shaken up over it – over all of it – tells me that you’re still Bucky in there somewhere.” It was quiet for a long time. He didn’t reply. I was afraid we had transitioned back into the Winter Solider. And then his arms fell down and surrounded me, his lips buried themselves into the hair on the top of my head, his warm breath trickling down around my ears

“Make me remember you. _Please_ ,” he said, his soft voice breaking. Without pulling myself away from him, I looked up into his face, my chin on his chest.

“Oh, I intend to,” I grinned. His eyes got a little more blue. “For now – I’ll be in the other room if you need me.” Before I could let go, he gave me a soft squeeze. I practically skipped all the way back to my bedroom. And Bucky didn’t even bother closing the bathroom door. It seemed that he trusted me, too.

I barely stepped foot into the bedroom before realizing that the poor thing was probably starved half to death. I had no idea where he had been staying between D.C. and New York and definitely not since he had been back here. I held my ear to the open doorway of the bathroom to make sure he was still alive – he was – before I went bolting downstairs to the kitchen, desperately trying to whip something up before he got out.

Breakfast seemed to be the easiest route, despite that it was fairly late in the afternoon by that point. Quantity was the problem I ran into next – how many eggs can a super soldier eat? I based it off of how many eggs I’d seen Steve eat in one sitting, which was usually about six. After toast and sausage was also on the counter, I raced back upstairs to find the shower curtain drawn back – and Bucky not in it.

In a panic, I threw open the bedroom door to find Bucky – a towel around his waist and another draped over his hair – looking through the pile of his old clothes, his back to me. Finally, I was given a good glimpse of how his metal arm attached. The skin of his back around the shoulder attachment was scarred and red – I was sure Hydra hadn’t considered the damage that arm would cause his real skin. Tears swelled my eyes as I walked up behind him.

“Oh, Buck,” I said as I placed my head against his back. At first, he tensed – he probably wasn’t used to people being able to sneak up behind him.

“I thought maybe you wised up to sharing a house with me,” he said, followed by what could almost be considered a laugh.

“I made you breakfast,” I laughed through the tears. He lifted his arm up and over me to turn to face me without letting me fall face first into the carpet, as I had been leaning on him pretty heavily. When I looked up at him, I saw confusion as he removed the towel from his wet hair.

“You cooked for me?” he asked, eyebrows furrowed. I scoffed.

“Of course,” I said, matching his confused expression with one of my own. But my attention was quickly averted back to the silver prosthesis. Delicately, I traced my fingers over the edge between metal and skin. He exhaled slowly.

“You keep doing this,” he said rubbing his hand over his face.

“Doing what?” I asked absently, memorizing every inch of raised skin.

“Hurting me,” he said softly and I immediately drew my hand back.

“I’m sorry,” I said quickly. “It still hurts?” I asked, but he pulled my hand back up and placed it again on his chest.

“It’s not my arm that hurts,” he said with a pained expression as he pressed my palm down against his skin.

“Then let me stop,” I reasoned, trying to pull my hand away. He shook his head.

“No.” He set his jaw, as if actually preparing for physical pain, and then pulled my hand up to his face. As my fingers pushed through the stubble on his cheek, he shut his eyes tightly, a short breath falling in steps from his lips.

“Tell me why I shouldn’t stop,” I demanded aloud. He didn’t open his eyes.

“I’ve spent the last 50 years as a weapon. Nothing hurts, anymore. Nothing but this. Nothing but you.” His Adam’s apple fell and retracted as he swallowed hard.

“Why does this hurt?” I asked, knowing it wasn’t physical pain.

“Because my brain is telling me to tear you apart, limb from limb, and salvage the mission that I failed.” He opened his eyes, finally, but they were still blue. “The rest of me wants to tear you apart in a _very_ different way.” His left hand reached up and I shuddered at the contact of his metal fingers – still hot from his shower – against my neck. “And I’m afraid that my body will confuse the one I want for the one I’m programmed for.” As he spoke, he lifted the edge of my shirt and lightly pressed onto the bruise on my hip. I recoiled with a sharp breath. “Like it did yesterday.”

“That was an accident,” I reasoned. His eyes set against mine, his jaw tightened.

“Was it?” he questioned. Still, I noticed that while he spoke, his hand had migrated around my hip and was working its way up my waist. His eyes had wandered away from mine and were traveling along the neck of his old T-shirt that I still had on.

“I trust you to keep the two separate,” I said softly, my hand still on his cheek.

“I don’t trust _myself_ to,” he replied mechanically, his eyes looking everywhere except my face. “But you’re making it very hard not to act on impulse.” His face was inching closer to mine with every word he spoke.

“What’s wrong with being a little impulsive?” I tried to lighten his mood a bit. His expression changed in an instant, and his suddenly gray eyes locked onto mine.

“Impulsive gets you killed,” he stated in a flat tone. Quickly, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he opened them again, the blue was a bit brighter. “Maybe we should eat.” I nodded, but stood still as he slipped his hands away from me. Just as I turned to follow him, he loosened the towel from his waist and stepped into a pair of his old sweatpants. I blinked in surprise for a few seconds.

“I’m not the only one making it hard not to act on impulse,” I huffed, finding it hard to pull my eyes away from the waistband of the sweatpants that were much too loose on him. He turned and raised an eyebrow, a hint of a smile on his lips, as he reached past me to grab a shirt from the top of the pile.

“I doubt either of us will make it through the night,” he stated calmly, rolling his shoulders as he walked from the bedroom, throwing the shirt over his shoulder, instead of  putting it on. I raised my head toward the ceiling and let out a long breath before following him down the stairs.

As we walked, he pulled a band from his wrist and loosely tied up his long hair. Not surprisingly, on impulse, I reached out and ran my fingers over the back of his neck. At the base of the stairs, he stopped, turning to face me from where I was standing a few steps above him. Before he spoke, he took my hips in his hands and placed his head against my stomach. We stood like this for several long minutes – him just listening to my breathing and me just running my fingers through the pieces of his hair that hung in front of his face.

“I still don’t even know your name,” he sighed, almost inaudibly.

“It’ll come to you,” I said, with a sad smile. I wanted to tell him. I wanted to tell him everything. But I knew it would mean more to him if he remembered on his own.

“What do I call you until then?” he asked, settling his chin against my belly button and looking up at me. His eyes were almost as blue as they were in 1943.

“What do you want to call me?” I asked evasively. His eyebrows rose slightly.

“There are a lot of things I’d like to call you,” he hummed, pulling his bottom lip into his teeth. Without thinking, I ran my fingers through the stubble on his cheeks and he bit down harder onto his lip.

“Like what?” I pressed, pulling my thumb down his mouth, coaxing him to let go of the hold his teeth had on his lip.

“Solnishka,” he replied softly, his lips moving over my thumb, eventually forming a kiss as his hand reached up to hold mine in place. My eyebrows furrowed, but I still smiled as his lips traveled along my palm, down to my wrist.

“What does that mean?” I wondered, though my mind was elsewhere.

“It’ll come to you,” he grinned, working his lips up my arm again. Was this the first real smile I had seen on his lips since he’d been back?

“That’s not really fair,” I playfully pouted as he reached the inside of my elbow.

“It’s Russian. That’s all I’m going to say.” Then he actually winked at me. And I almost melted into a puddle in his hands. It was almost like he had never left. _This_ was Bucky. The more time he spent with me, the more he seemed to remember who he was.

Before I could take his face into my hands and pour my mouth over his, he removed his hands and walked – sauntered – into the kitchen. I huffed loudly and I was pretty certain that I heard him laugh. He was becoming more like himself every second.

“You must be starving,” I said, piling eggs and sausage and toast onto a plate. “I don’t have a table yet, you’ll have to eat on one of the couches,” I nodded toward the two oppositely facing couches in the next room. He looked down at the plate, then back at me.

“Eat with me,” he said, throwing his shirt – that he still hadn’t put on – over the back of the couch. I wondered if he was doing this on purpose.

“If you insist,” I smiled as we settled next to each other on my smaller couch, which was more like a loveseat, because it only had two cushions. I noticed that he specifically sat furthest from the front door, and I smiled to myself. He _wanted_ to stay.

“Tell me,” he said, shoveling giant forkfuls of food into his mouth. “You said something about Steve yesterday. Is that the Captain?” I smiled sadly at how formally he was talking about his best friend, but I nodded in response.

“Rogers. Steve Rogers. He’s your best friend, you know,” I said carefully. He didn’t look surprised. I was pretty sure he had gotten that vibe from Steve.

“I could tell that’s what he thought I was,” he said, his eyebrows furrowing, setting the fork back down onto our shared plate.

“What is it?” I asked, wondering if the Winter Soldier was going to come roaring out at any moment now. He let out a long breath.

“I nearly killed him.” He placed his forehead in his hand. “What kind of best friend would do that?” His eyes shot up to mine, looking for answers, but I wasn’t sure I had the ones he was looking for. The blue continued to fade.

“Steve told me you saved his life,” I countered. His eyebrows rose slightly.

“He knew it was me, huh?” he asked, a smile appearing on his lips and fading just as quickly. “Did he also tell you he spent 3 weeks in the hospital?” I knew he was trying to convince me of what a horrible person he was, but I saw through it.

“How did you know how long he was in the hospital?” I asked. His eyes widened.

“I, uh … I checked on him. A few times,” he said, pushing the hair out of his eyes sheepishly, as if embarrassed that he cared about another person. I laughed.

“Yesterday you told me you’re not Bucky anymore. And I hate to tell you how wrong you are,” I grinned, taking his face into my hands and kissing him softly.

“Keep that up, and I’ll be whoever you want me to be,” he replied, kissing me a bit more ferociously in return. I playfully rolled my eyes.

“Eat,” I prompted, pushing the fork back toward him. Just as he had heaped the equivalent of 3 eggs into his mouth at once, my front door flew open.

“Why aren’t you answering your phone?” I heard Steve shout before I even had time to move, his voice trailing off into silence as he saw who was sitting on the couch next to me. I didn’t even _bother_ turning around. I just froze, watching Bucky carefully, my eyes wide. What would he do? Would he revert back into the Winter Soldier and try to finish his mission? Try to kill his best friend?

“Oh, shit,” he mumbled through a mouthful of eggs.  Nope. Still Bucky. Carefully, I turned. The expression on Steve’s face was indescribable.

“Steve, I was going to call,” I tried to explain as I stood. I heard Bucky set the plate down onto the coffee table behind me. Steve didn’t even seem to hear me. He took a few giant steps around the opposite couch – and me – and stood directly in front of Bucky, who stood to meet him. Bucky’s eyes were wide – I wasn’t sure what either one of them would do. Technically, they had both just recently tried to kill each other.

Suddenly, Steve moved toward him, and Bucky started to put up his arms in defense. Instead, Steve’s wrapped his arms tightly around Bucky’s shoulders, trapping his arms at his sides. After a few moments of alarmed surprise, Bucky let his chin rest atop Steve’s shoulder – he closed his eyes for a single second.

“Hey, Buck,” Steve said softly, tightening his grip.

“Hi,” Bucky replied, in what sounded like a sigh. Just as Steve began to pull away, Bucky put his arms up and hugged him back. “I’m glad I didn’t kill you.”

“Me too,” Steve laughed quietly, his voice quivering slightly. Tears instantly sprang up into my eyes. Despite how much the two of them had changed over the last seventy years, they were still the same two kids from Brooklyn. Kids who grew up together, who depended on each other. Steve gave him one last hard pat on the back before stepping back, blinking away the threatening tears in his eyes, trying to appear strong for Bucky. It seemed like their roles had reversed. It wasn’t too long ago that Bucky was the one hiding his emotions to be strong for Steve.

“Hungry?” I asked Steve, giving him an excuse to stay. He smiled.

“I could eat.” Bucky looked at the floor – I swore it was to hide his grin.

\---------------- 

“And then _you_ made me get on the Cyclone,” Steve laughed, pointing a blaming finger in Bucky’s direction from where he sat on the couch opposite of Bucky and I, the coffee table between us. I hadn’t seen Bucky’s eyes so bright blue since he’d been back. I should have called Steve earlier. Together, we were bringing him back.

“I doubt I could make _you_ do anything, big guy,” he smirked with a single raised eyebrow. “We were pretty even in D.C., if I remember that right.” Steve smiled sheepishly, letting his head fall forward. He reached into his inner jacket pocket.

“I hate to break it to you, Buck, but I used to be a runt,” he laughed, handing over the picture that had been in his pocket. I leaned over Bucky’s shoulder to see a picture of the two of them in 1943, just before Bucky left – Bucky in his uniform standing nearly a good foot taller than Steve, back before he was Captain America. I almost forgot what it had been like back then. But they both were smiling like the idiots I remembered. Still, I looked over at Steve with a sad smile on my face. Did he always carry around that picture?

I expected Bucky to make some snide remark about what a skinny punk Steve used to be. I expected him to laugh his ass off. I expected him to ask what Steve had been eating for the last 70 years. Instead, his hands began to shake – he let out a deep breath, I assumed to calm them, but it didn’t help. His jaw tightened, he swallowed hard.

“This kid … was _you_?” he asked in a whisper. The way he said it made it seem like he had seen _this_ version of Steve somewhere before, while he had been the Winter Soldier.

“Yeah,” Steve said, watching his best friend carefully. “This was the me that first met you. Back in grade school.” Bucky didn’t say anything – he just stared closely at the picture in his shaking hands. Finally, he looked back up at Steve.

“I _know_ you,” he said, nearly wincing in his expression. Steve smiled sadly.

“I know you do, buddy,” he said, reaching over and holding his hand over one of Bucky’s hand, that was wrinkling the picture from how tightly he held onto it.

“You have more of these, don’t you?” Bucky asked, suddenly looking back to me.

“Of course. I’ll go get them.” I raced up the stairs and dug a small box of pictures out from under the pile of Bucky’s clothes in my room. Before I could descend the stairs, I stopped at the top, seeing Bucky folded over in half, his head in his hands. Though caught by surprise at first, in 3 seconds flat, Steve pushed the coffee table out from between them, knelt at Bucky’s feet and wedged himself between Bucky’s arms. Without even pausing, Bucky firmly wrapped his arms around Steve’s chest, burying his face into his shoulder. Both his fists crumpled the back of Steve’s jacket inside them.

“I’m so sorry.” His voice shook – I could hear the tears running through his words.

“It’s okay, Buck,” Steve replied, placing a hand on the back of Bucky’s head. While I couldn’t see Bucky’s face, I could see Steve’s clearly. And I could see the tears running down his cheeks unrestricted. My own followed quickly.

“It’s _not_ okay. _Nothing_ I’ve done is okay,” Bucky argued angrily, pounding his fists against Steve’s back. Steve tightened his grip.

“It wasn’t your fault,” he began, but Bucky interrupted.

“No, I was aware of everything I did. Every time I put a bullet into someone’s head. Every time I slid my knife across someone’s throat. That was _me_ ,” he sobbed. I slid to the carpet at the top of the stairs, holding my fingers over my mouth. But I stayed put. I knew he needed Steve right then. And Steve needed him back.

“You know what else was you?” Steve said, in an authoritative tone. “The guy who had my back every time I got bullied in school. The guy who carried around an extra inhaler in his backpack, just in case I had an asthma attack. The guy who visited me in the hospital in the middle of the night, every night, for 3 weeks straight.” Of course Steve had known that. And of course, it was more than just a ‘few times’ like Bucky had indicated.

“After I tried to kill you!” Bucky shouted from the folds of Steve’s jacket.

“After you _saved_ me,” Steve clarified strongly. “After you pulled me from the water. I _know_ that was you, Buck. Because you’re the guy who looks out for me. You always have been. That hasn’t changed.” For a long time, it was quiet.

“Till the end of the line, right?” Bucky whispered softly.

“Till the end of the line,” Steve repeated.

\----------------

“I think that’s my cue,” Steve whispered, nodding over to where Bucky had fallen asleep on the arm of the couch, his feet propped up into my lap, old photographs from 1942 still clutched in his hands, his arm hanging over the edge of the couch.

“Thank you, Steve,” I said as he leaned down and kissed my forehead. “He’s coming around.” He nodded, his smile brighter than it had ever been.

“Yeah,” he grinned, but it faded quickly as he continued. “But be careful. The Winter Soldier is still in there. Even if Bucky remembers everything about us, it doesn’t undo everything that Hydra did to him.” With a sigh, I nodded solemnly.

“I’ll call you if anything happens,” I agreed. His smile returned slightly.

“You can call me even if nothing happens.” He looked over at Bucky one last time before walking toward the front door. “Take care of him, Maggie.” I couldn’t help but remember when Bucky had said that same thing to me about Steve in 1943.

“I promise,” I smiled as he opened the door. “Get the light, would you?”

“Good night, Mag,” he switched off the light and locked the door as he shut it. For fear of waking Bucky, and not sure how much sleep he had been getting in the last 70 years, I maintained my position, his feet still in my lap. I leaned my head back on the edge of the sofa, watching Bucky’s chest rise and fall evenly, my eyes closing slowly.

\----------------

When I woke, it was still dark – Bucky and I were still on the couch. I looked around, wondering what it was that woke me – then I heard it. Bucky was mumbling in his sleep. Carefully, I moved his feet out of my lap and knelt beside him on the couch. It was Russian – he was speaking Russian in his sleep. It was almost cute, until I noticed the expression on his face change. First it was cold – completely without emotion, the only noticeable movement was the clenching of his teeth. It then changed, almost instantaneously, to panic and fear and pain. His eyebrows furrowed above his tightly closed eyes, he gritted his teeth and ground them together. I started to move to wake him – but he began screaming. Not shouting – no words were spoken – he was _screaming_. As if in immense pain. And he screamed through his clenched teeth, as if he were unable to open his mouth. His whole body tensed, his fists closed tightly around the couch cushions. My hands shook as I pushed against him, whispering his name softly, trying to undo whatever nightmare he was having, tears streaming down my cheeks.

“No, stop, please,” he whispered. “Don’t make me do this,” he moaned. He mumbled incoherently for a few seconds and I could only pick out certain words – _don’t, stop, help, Steve_ – before the screaming started again, this time not through clenched teeth, but with his mouth open wide, making the sound louder and that much more unbearable.

“Bucky,” I increased my volume, but to no avail. When the screaming ended, he traded it for Russian, speaking in a calculatingly monotone voice – his expression completely faded. He spoke without a break in his words, and I tried not to imagine the things he was saying. Until he transitioned into English and I couldn’t pretend any longer.

“Begging for your life won’t make a fucking difference.” The inflection in his voice remained completely empty, as did his expression. I sat back on my heels as I covered my lips to hold in the air that fell from my chest.

“Bucky.” My voice shook, but I still reached out and held his shoulder. “Please wake up,” I cried, nudging him softly. The unbroken chain of Russian returned, and as soon as he took a breath, his eyes snapped open. Without having even a second to say anything to him, he wrapped the fingers of his left arm – his metal arm – around my neck and pivoted, throwing me down onto the floor and putting his knee into my chest, forcefully shoving any breath left in my lungs out in an instant. As he stared down at me, he spoke again – a long series of Soviet words I couldn’t understand. Before I could even speak his name, to remind him that he was home, he switched to English, his voice deep and low.

“Hail Hydra,” he stated insipidly, almost sarcastically, through a frightening expression. Tears flowed down my temples into the carpet as I swallowed hard – waiting for the incoming blow, whatever it would be. My whole body shook as I closed my eyes.

“I’ll still love you, Buck,” I said quietly, through a shaking sigh. When I felt Bucky’s vise grip soften on my throat, I opened my eyes again. The expression that I saw on his face was much worse than the one that had been there a moment before – because he was awake. Now his expression was that of pure horror, his eyes wide, terrified tears forming along their edges. His fingers slowly uncurled from around my throat, and he shifted his weight to the leg that wasn’t pressed into my chest – and while I was finally able to breathe, I was fairly certain he had broken a rib or two.

“Solnishka,” he whispered, his panicked eyes traveling over my face and down to my neck, which I was sure was marked with the imprint of his fingers. With his hands raised, he stood, taking several long steps backward as I sat up.

“Bucky,” I tried to console him, but he shook his head.

“I never should have come back.” His voice shuddered as he looked at me, his wild, gray eyes anxiously scanning the room, but not focused on anything.

“It’s okay, I’m fine,” I assured him, reaching out to him, but he stepped back further, shaking his head – the horrified expression on his face remained the same.

“If I had squeezed just a little harder, I would have crushed your windpipe and you would have died of asphyxiation, which is slow and excruciating. If I had wanted your death to be quick, I would have squeezed a lot harder and broken your cervical vertebrae  and disconnected your spinal cord,” he rattled off without taking a breath, as if to prove to me that he and the Winter Soldier were the same person – and that my Bucky was capable of exactly the same things. “And I’m not sure which one I was about to do.”

“You weren’t even awake,” I tried to reason.

“Which is even worse,” he snapped. “It makes me wonder what I’ve done when you weren’t there to wake me up.”

“Then that’s why you need to stay.”

“And risk snapping your neck tomorrow night? No fucking way,” he shouted, angrily pulling the band from his hair, letting it fall down into his face, as he grabbed the shirt from the back of the couch and pulled it over his head, making his way to the kitchen.

“Where are you going to go, Buck?” I shouted back, following closely behind him. He pulled open the door and the bottom hinge broke off. He cursed under his breath.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me,” I argued, grabbing the hand that could actually feel my skin. He looked over at me for a single second before pulling away.

“Your _life_ is what matters to _me_ ,” he emphasized softly. Before I could argue more, he pulled my face in and kissed me hard. Then he was out the backdoor before I could try to stop him. I couldn’t even see where he went once he disappeared into the darkness.

\---------------- 

“I’m so sorry for making you come over in the middle of the night,” I apologized as I closed the front door behind him, holding my ribcage with my free hand.

“Don’t be silly, Maggie, I’m glad you called,” Steve said as he carefully took my chin into his hands and tilted my head from side to side, inspecting the damage that had been inflicted on my neck. “It’s already bruising,” he said solemnly.

“He didn’t do it on purpose,” I said, sniffling through my tears. The worst part of the whole ordeal hadn’t been what Bucky had done to me – it hadn’t even been what Bucky had said, even the ‘ _Hail Hydra’_ that he had uttered, of which I hadn’t yet mentioned to Steve. The worst part had been the screaming, the pleading to stop, his calling to Steve for help. Maybe even worse than that had been the expression on his face when he realized that his hand was wrapped tightly around my throat.

“I know,” Steve said, with a heavy sigh as we sat on the couch that only a few hours ago had held a not-so-peacefully sleeping prisoner of war.

“He was screaming, Steve,” I said, tears suddenly pouring over my cheeks. He reached over and tightly took my hands into his own – his breathing shaky.

“I can’t even imagine what they’ve done to him,” he said quietly. “Did he say anything?” I swallowed hard. I almost didn’t want to tell him any of it.

“Are you sure you want to know?” I asked, looking carefully at him.

“Was it that bad?” he winced. I nodded. He took a deep breath. “I need to know.”

“He was begging them to stop, calling for help,” I said, leaving out the fact that he was calling Steve specifically. He didn’t need any more guilt over this – I already knew how responsible he felt for letting Bucky fall from that train in the first place, how it kept him up at night that he hadn’t immediately dove into the ravine after him.

Steve clenched his jaw tightly as I continued. “Most of it was Russian, I couldn’t understand it. When it was in English, half of it was Bucky. The calling for help was definitely Bucky,” I said, trailing off.

“The other half?” he asked hesitantly.

“It was definitely _not_ Bucky,” I swallowed, hoping he wouldn’t ask. He did.

“Mag, what was it?” he asked, squeezing my hands. I took a deep breath.

“First he said something along the lines of ‘begging for your life won’t make a difference to me.’ Then he threw me on the floor and said …” The tears spilled over my cheeks again as I remembered the empty look on his face.

“He said what?” Steve’s blue eyes were wide, his teeth grinding together.

“Hail Hydra,” I admitted softly, feeling like my mouth was on fire just from speaking the abhorrent phrase. Looking like he had gotten punched in the chest, Steve fell hard against the back of the couch. I was afraid it wouldn’t hold him. His hands fell away from mine at the same time, and I suddenly felt very isolated.

“Maybe he’s not Bucky at all, anymore,” he said, almost inaudibly.  

“No,” I quickly argued, taking his hands again. “It’s still Bucky.”

“Maybe he’s only using you to get to me. To finish his mission,” he said, starting blankly at the wall behind me.

“Steve,” I shook his huge hands, trying to get him to snap out of whatever he had fallen into. “If that were true, he could have killed you at any time in the last 8 hours.”

“He’s biding his time,” he said, his eyes wide, as if suddenly realizing all of this.

“Stop,” I ordered, to no avail.

“He’s been doing this for 70 years while I was sleeping. He’s gotten good at pretending. He knows how to hide in plain sight.” The grip he had on my hands tightened.

“Steve!” I snapped, jerking my fingers away from him. He looked up at me, swallowing hard. My expression softened, slightly. “I said stop.”

“I’m sorry, Mag,” he sighed heavily.

“As soon as he was aware of what was happening, he stopped. Immediately,” I explained. “This has nothing to do with his mission. This has to do with seventy years of being tortured by Hydra.” Steve’s eyes fell as he nodded.

“Yeah,” he said, clenching his jaw tightly, a look in his eyes that I hadn’t ever seen in them. “I’m going to hunt down every last Hydra survivor. And pay them back. In full.”

\----------------

It took several hours of convincing Steve that Bucky was still Bucky, underneath all the Winter Soldier. Of course, what I couldn’t convince him of was that I would be fine in my house by myself, that Bucky may not ever come back. So, he slept on the couch.

Unfortunately, I had been right. Bucky didn’t come back. Steve stayed for several days, and Bucky never showed up again. I was afraid we had lost him for good.

Natasha had called to check on me. During the course of the last 2 years, she and I had gotten pretty close, as she was my eyes on Steve while he was at SHIELD. I respected her even more once Steve told me all she had done for him during the Hydra outbreak.

During our conversation, I asked her if she knew what Bucky’s nickname for me was, as she was the only other person I knew that spoke Russian. Though, I hadn’t mentioned exactly what it was about. I hadn’t mentioned Bucky specifically. Just in case. She was still an assassin, after all. _‘Solnishka,’_ she had said with a soft laugh. _‘Basically, it means sunshine. Light of my life kind of thing.’_

 ---------------

“One more night,” Steve said as he stretched out onto my couch again, for the fourth night in a row, since the incident with Bucky. I just smiled.

“You can stay as long as you like,” I replied, covering his feet with a blanket.

“I just want to make sure you’re safe,” he sighed softly.

“I don’t think he’s coming back this time, Steve.” From where he laid on the couch, he reached out and took my hand.

“I’m not so sure.” I patted his hand softly.

“Get some sleep,” I smiled, almost forcefully as I slowly made my way up the stairs. As funny as it sounded, I had gotten used to Bucky being there, even if it had only been for a single day.

Before I got into bed, I stood in front of the mirror. The bruises on my neck were fading in color, transitioning from a deep purple into a lighter blue, highlighted with a yellow edge, forming a perfectly colored imprint of the fingers of Bucky’s left hand. I lifted my shirt – the bruise on my hip from the first night was nearly faded, but the bruise on my ribcage was still completely black in color. I hadn’t told Steve about that one. It hurt the worst. Either way, if my ribs were broken, there wasn’t much I could do about that.

Carefully, I climbed into bed and laid on my unbruised left side, toward the wall. Every night, I half-expected to hear a soft apologetic voice coming from the window, or the corner of the room. And every night I was disappointed.

With a painful moan, I pulled my hair off my neck and twirled it up over the top of my pillow. It hurt to move, it hurt to breathe. And just like my hip injury, completely worth it. I would have given anything just to know Bucky was alive again. But to see him? To have him hold me, even if it was by the throat? Worth more than anything.

I laid still for what felt like hours, though I was sure it hadn’t been more than a few minutes. Just like every other night over the past few days, I knew I wouldn’t sleep. My mind raced with every possibility of where Bucky could possibly be – whether he was safe, whether he was fed. Whether he was still Bucky.

Just as I closed my eyes, trying to force my brain into sleep, I felt a brush against my neck.  I was barely able to restrain myself from turning to kiss his face. Or slap it.

He lightly traced over the bruises his fingers had caused, and I heard him sigh softly. I didn’t turn – I wondered if he thought I was asleep. Finally, he carefully curved his fingers around my neck and placed his forehead on top of my hair.

“I am so sorry.” He pushed out a heavy breath, hot against the back of my neck.

“I’m more angry that you left than I am about the bruises,” I said sharply. His fingers tensed, almost imperceptibly.

“I had to,” he replied quietly.

“Why?” I asked naively, but knowing the answer.

“You know why.”

“Then why did you come back?” I asked without thinking. As soon as I said it, I was afraid it sounded like I wanted him to leave again. He was quiet for a moment.

“I don’t know,” he finally said, letting his fingers slip away from my neck. I twisted over onto my back so that I could look up at him. The stubble on his face was thick, the dark circles under his eyes were heavier than they were a few days ago – I wondered if he had slept at all since he’d left. Despite that, his eyes were blue – bright blue – as soon as they were on mine, and his expression softened, almost in relief.

“Yes, you do,” I stated simply. He liked to pretend he was able to put me out of his mind, but both of us knew it wasn’t true. He wouldn’t have come back if it were.

“Yeah. I do,” he admitted, his eyes traveling over my face and his fingers reaching up to do the same. He pulled them along my jawline and let his eyes follow the trail. I noticed he steadied himself with his metal arm by gripping onto the edge of the bedside table, keeping that arm as far away from me as possible.

As his fingers traveled over my face, they shook lightly. I couldn’t tell if he was nervous about the possibility of hurting me again, or nervous about being suddenly so close to me after several days of solitude. It was like starting over again.

Maybe not _completely_ starting over. He had come into my room and sat on the edge of my bed without me having to invite him to. The trajectory of his fingers changed and they slowly trickled down the curve of my neck, following the outline of the bruises again. I watched him carefully, and his lips, originally pursed in tensed concern began to soften, the bottom one curling up under his teeth. At that sight, I let out a slow breath. _That_ … was definitely trademark Bucky. And if he _was_ Bucky, he knew exactly what it did to me.

He must have noticed my reaction, because he rose one eyebrow very slightly, biting down a little harder on his bottom lip, as he let his fingers stray a little further. He pushed them into the neck of the shirt I was wearing, brushing against my collarbone and curving around the back of my neck. His thumb remained in the front and as his hand tensed, his thumb rubbed gently against my throat, arching my neck. His eyebrow rose further and he leaned down, holding his scruffy cheek against my jaw, but not setting his lips to my skin just yet.

I drove my hands into his long hair, twisting my fingers through the strands and forming a fist around it. Though I couldn’t see his face, as it was buried in my neck, I could feel the heat of his breath against me and it was suddenly very rapid. His metal fingers were pressing holes into the wood of the bedside table.

His lips had barely brushed my neck, and I let slip a breathy sigh, but he stopped, speaking into my skin. “I don’t want to hurt you again.” The stubble on his cheek brushed against me with every word, and as soon as he was finished speaking, he lightly held his lips over the spot where his words had just fallen.

“What hurt the worst was the last 4 days I spent without you, Buck,” I sighed, running my fingernails along the back of his neck. His fingers tightened onto me in reply, and he twisted, placing his knee onto the mattress next to me. As he leaned over me, I expected some half-threat about how he could kill me with his pinkie finger, or how he almost had a few nights prior. Instead, he surprised me by setting his lips on top of mine, though not moving them at all. His eyes remained closed.

But I couldn’t stand it. I separated my lips just enough to let his bottom lip fall into the space they created. That was all it took. Less than softly, he pushed his right arm underneath me and hoisted me up against him, driving his lips hard down into mine. In like fashion, I quickly slipped my tongue between his teeth for a second, and he moaned into my mouth. After _that_ reaction, I couldn’t very well keep my tongue in my own mouth, and I started to repeat the process only to find that his tongue had already found mine. This time, I was the one to let slip a moan, and a growl formed in the back of his throat in reply.

With his judgment clouded by the growing heat between us, he let his metal hand slip from the table and slide up underneath my shirt. I didn’t dare make a noise, or a movement that made him think I wanted anything less, despite that his hand slid roughly over the bruise on my ribcage. In fact, even that pain was soon lost as his metal hand came to rest softly over my breast. I let his name escape from my lungs and, while his grip there increased slightly, he was obviously being careful to not let his strength get away from him.

  As his right hand matched his left, I curled my fingers into the waist of the gray sweatpants he had been wearing since I last saw him. The ferocity of his kiss increased exponentially, his hands were covering every inch of skin they could find, which was generally everything as I was only wearing a T-shirt and a pair of his old boxers. The latter was suddenly removed and he slid his hand slowly along the edge of my hip.

Surprised at how quickly he was moving, based on our activity from the last few days, but not wanting his momentum to slow, I gripped the shoulder of his shirt and pulled. He wriggled out of it before taking mine with it. As I lay beneath him, completely exposed, he just sat back on his heels and stared for a second, likely at the enormous bruises that littered my skin. To make him forget any of that, I equaled his appearance to mine by tugging at the waist of his pants until he finally kicked them off.

Wow. Yeah, still _all_ Bucky.

I barely got a glance in before he laid all of his weight on me, kissing softly at the skin behind my ear and shifting his hips further and further into mine, until we were flush. With his full length pressed into me, he only had to shift slightly and I let out a sharp moan, digging my fingernails into his back. He looked at me, one eyebrow raised, and a half-smile on his lips at how easily he could affect me.

“Should I stop?” he asked with a laugh at how often he said that to me lately.

“Oh, God no,” I groaned, gripping his hips and pulling him tighter, to which he responded with a violent kiss and a sporadic rhythm to the thrust of his hips. Despite how I was trying to keep my voice down, a near scream escaped from my lips. It only spurred Bucky to grip onto me tighter as he covered my mouth with his.

He had just moved his mouth away from mine long enough to begin to speak, when my bedroom door flew open, a very concerned Steve standing in the doorway.

“Are you –“ He stopped, looking carefully at Bucky. A quiet smile crossed his lips as he turned and softly shut the door. Bucky watched me carefully for a moment before we heard, “Good to have you back. Jerk,” from the other side of the door.

“Good to _be_ back. Punk,” Bucky called back, looking thoughtfully toward the door.

“You want me to trade places with him?” I asked with a playful smirk.

“Oh, shut up, Maggie,” he grinned as he kissed me. Though I kissed him back, my eyes were wide. I wondered if he realized what he had just done.

 

Evidently so, because his kiss slowed and he pushed back to look at me.

 

“ _Maggie_ ,” he enunciated my name, with a beaming smile. “Hi, Maggie.”

“Oh, there you are, Bucky,” I replied with a smile. His eyes had never been so blue.

“ _Now_ I know why I had you pinned in the backyard,” he breathed out with a laugh, his blue eyes scoured my face, and I could almost read the memories hiding behind them.

“I still don’t want you to stop,” I laughed, tightening my legs around his hips and pulling his lips back to mine.

“But Steve _is_ still right outside the door,” he smiled against my lips. And there was obviously no other way I _could_ respond, save for one.

“If he knows what’s good for him, he’ll stay there.”

 


End file.
